What The 'Nutters Really Wanted
Silly wabbits, it was never just about abortion. You didn't think that, did you? Check out this Judith Graham article from the Chicago Trib entitled "Contraception becomes new rallying point for abortion foes":
Emboldened by the anti-abortion movement's success in restricting access to abortion, an increasingly vocal group of Christian conservatives is arguing that it's time to mount a concerted attack on contraception.Their voices were raised in Rosemont, Ill., last week at an unusual anti-abortion meeting that drew 250 people from around the nation to condemn artificial birth control. Experts at the gathering assailed contraception on the grounds that it devalues children, harms relationships between men and women, promotes sexual promiscuity and leads to falling birth rates, among social ills.
"Contraception is more the root cause of abortion than anything else," Joseph Scheidler, an anti-abortion veteran whose Pro-Life Action League sponsored the conference, said in an interview.
Moron.
No one knows how many supporters Scheidler and his colleagues have, but conservative leaders are watching to see if the anti-contraception rhetoric gains traction.Of special interest is how closely evangelical Christians are willing to align themselves with traditional Catholics on the issue. The Catholic Church long has opposed contraception, but evangelicals generally embraced its use - until recently, some argue.
"It is clear there is a major rethinking going on among evangelicals on this issue, especially among young people" disenchanted with the sexual revolution, said the Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "There is a real push back against the contraceptive culture now."
Oh, please. It's not the sexual revolution, but the feminist revolution that caused all the problems. And no, I don't mean the one that gave me the right to vote, or the part about equal pay for equal work.
Thanks to the radical feminists and gender feminists (the "men are evil and must be brought down!" crowd), it's really hard for a lot of people to even get a date these days. Guys are too pussified to ask, and why would they want to, since so many girls respond so bitchily if they do ask and/or dress like plumbers?
As for a solution to the problem of horny evangies trying to yank the freedoms of the rest of us...well, it's just like the Middle East: Airdrop Whitney and an army of hookers, and you won't hear word one from Osama and friends -- or from the sex-starved religious fanatics.
As for the "contraceptive culture," I can't remember the name of the guy's blog where I read this, but he brought up a good point the nutters don't consider: Why would getting rid of "the contraceptive culture" (or abortions) be a good thing? Since (let's be real) people aren't going to stop fucking, where does that leave us? With loads of unwanted babies being born? Well, who's going to take care of them? And who's going to pay for them?
At the end of the article, one of the 'nutter chicks says this:
"It's not just a side issue from pro-life, it's the core issue," Libby Gray Macke, director of Project Reality, an abstinence program in Illinois, told the crowd last Friday. "Abstinence is the way to prevent abortion."
How about this: You abstain, I'll fuck my brains out. You can also abstain from making laws that tell me I can't have an abortion if fucking my brains out gets me pregnant. I'm guessing you only read the Bible, not science, so of course you don't understand that a clump of cells is not a person. But, I do know that, and I'm fine with having clumps of cells expunged from my body, whether they're fertilized eggs, suspicious moles, or hangnails.
Amy, I have zero quarrel with this post, and feel no subterranean energy about the issue anyway. (The failure of feminist thinking about this is in their rhetoric which describes abortion almost as a harvest, rather than as a sadness to be avoided.)
But you might or might not get a kick out of the Cosh post from yesterday:
http://www.colbycosh.com/#kjsn
> Well, who's going to take care
> of them? And who's going to
> pay for them?
The best line in Barney Frank's career: "Republican concern for human life begins at conception... And ends at birth."
crid at October 12, 2006 4:39 AM
So true. It's a sign of how peripheral to peripheral Ms. is that their celebrities were the likes of Najimy and Leifer.
Amy Alkon at October 12, 2006 6:35 AM
Ugh. Sex=power, and these religious wackos don't want women to have any. Or men. NO ONE gets any power except the Church Elders!!!!! Or fun. Anything fun might lead to sex.
Melissa at October 12, 2006 7:32 AM
Fight the powers of oppression! The most subversive thing a woman can do is have sex for her own pleasure. Get out there, girls, and get your orgasms!
Chris at October 12, 2006 11:41 AM
Amy, the "hairy-legged man-haters" are a rather small subset of the feminists I know. I think you're tarring with a rather broad brush there. Some of the most virulent man-hating comments have come from the mouths of some of the most "traditional" women I know. And feminists are firmly on your side in this battle; they've been on the front lines to keep birth control and abortion accessible and available for decades. (Except for the oxymoronically-named "Feminists For Life" who want to criminalize all abortions and seem to be mute on the issue of birth control.) What the fundies want to take away just as much as fun sex is women's autonomy. I'm a feminist primarily because I believe that women have a right to bodily integrity.
deja pseu at October 12, 2006 12:47 PM
I think their influence is more pervasive than most people believe. I see it between the lines of e-mails from men and women, and in talking to people -- the way the feminist victim culture (and the promotion of the idiocy that men and women are the same, not simply deserving of equal rights) has negatively affected sex, dating, and relationships between men and women.
Amy Alkon at October 12, 2006 2:52 PM
Or maybe people who already have a victim mentality are latching onto what they believe is a rationalization/explanation for that? I've run across plenty of people (including some close family members) who had a pretty well-developed sense of victimization long before the feminist movement ever got any traction. What about the Christian right who are now playing the victim card? They're certainly not claiming any influence of or allegiance to feminists.
deja pseu at October 12, 2006 3:48 PM
Re-reading your comment, I guess you're referring more to dynamics of personal relationships, but my point about people with an inherent victim mentality still holds.
deja pseu at October 12, 2006 3:58 PM
Sure, there are plenty of people with a victim mentality, but it's not just that -- it's the completely wrong notion that men and women are the same that feminism promotes.
Amy Alkon at October 12, 2006 4:00 PM
I personally don't think men and women are the same, but I don't think there are necessarily as hard and clear of lines as a lot of people would like to draw. (Men Are Visual! Women Are Nurturing!) I think there's a lot of variation of any characteristic within each sex, and hate to see the Women are always X way and Men are always Y way kind of absolutism that's often promoted. I mean, in my house, between me and the hubby, I'm the one who would be watching football on Sunday afternoons if I had the time.
deja pseu at October 12, 2006 4:10 PM
Not all Christian sects related to the religious right are condemning of sexual pleasure. Our pastor is outspoken on the subject: http://tinyurl.com/yfvdlf
Rojak at October 12, 2006 5:22 PM
Rojak, I love the Landover Baptist site! Always good for a chuckle.
deja pseu at October 12, 2006 6:37 PM
Deja -
Your point against overgeneralization is a valid one when dealing with any particular individual, but in a forum like this, one HAS to generalize to forward a dialogue in any meaningful direction. Otherwise, Amy's column risks the handcuffs of polite truisms.
Or, as novelist Dr. Rodney William Whitaker (aka Trevanian) once put it: stereotypes are the perfect method with which to describe the masses. They are only inapplicable to individuals.
snakeman99 at October 13, 2006 8:26 AM
Snake, you should comment more often
Crid at October 14, 2006 6:59 AM
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